


wasted times

by ariquitecontrary (ItsAriyanna)



Series: Wicked Games Series [3]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, Heavy Angst, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Starting Over
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 12:31:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14261016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsAriyanna/pseuds/ariquitecontrary
Summary: How he can save them when he can't even save himself?





	wasted times

**Author's Note:**

> Ten and I have been working on this and we thought putting it up for her birthday would be the best kind of little gift. This is going to be Jughead's story. Wicked Games was Betty's story and this is Jughead dealing with the fallout of everything. I really hope you guys enjoy it. It won't be long, only 5 chapters, but it already means so much to both Ten and I. 
> 
> Wish her a happy birthday over on tumblr (@softieparker)! Thank you for bringing this story back to life with me. <3 
> 
> We hope you guys like it.
> 
> Listen to So Cold by Ben Cocks ft. Nikisha Reyes if you feel like feeling what I did while writing this.
> 
>  
> 
> **TW: Heed the tags; Jughead does get a pill addiction in this story. Read with caution if that's something that will bother you.**

The world around them has changed; whether they want to acknowledge it or not, it has. 

Things have shifted in a way neither of them allow themselves to think about, but for Jughead especially, he’s off balance in every way a person can be. Leaving the hospital had been the most emotionally taxing experience of his life. Once again, he was torn away from a place that had taken on some semblance of home. As one would expect, leaving had been damn near impossible. He knows how crazy it sounds, but it felt like he was leaving his safe haven. The one place where no one could get him. The rest of the world seemed daunting and not as distant as he’d like. 

The drive home had been horrible. They were given a driver, one that the cops assured them was safe and had an extensive background check, but Jughead still sat up straight and at attention the entire ride home. His heart was pounding against his chest at every turn and the underlying fear of never being able to trust anyone ever again was a sensation that was constantly under his skin. It wasn’t really a sensation, that implies something pleasant. More like an awareness. A sixth sense. He’d always been a cautious person before, but this was different. This felt like a curse to him. 

The whole way home, his mind conjured images of all the ways the driver could have sprung something on them. Could he have shoved Jughead’s head into the glass window, knocking him out? Pulled a gun on him, a knife? He wondered what was in the trunk. A gun? A crowbar? A tire iron?

He told himself he was being foolish. The driver had been perfectly pleasant, exchanged a bit of small talk and kept the radio on low volume, he’d been told Betty wasn’t doing great with loud noises yet, and she kindly tipped him extra. But for some reason he couldn’t pinpoint, Jughead was shaken up anyway.

Betty’s apartment looks exactly the way it did the last time he’d been inside of it, but it feels like it’s been years since that day. He’d looked around in wonder, trying to familiarize himself with it again. A place that once had held so many good memories for him now reminds him of one of the darkest parts of his existence and he hates it. He used to feel like he could make a future for them here; a _family_ , but now it feels like he died here. He’s alive and he’s breathing and his skin is warm to the touch, but he feels like he’s going through the motions in this place; like a mindless zombie. 

He refused to turn on the TV because he knew what would be waiting on every news outlet for the drama vultures of Los Angeles to devour. The cameras and the paparazzi had been blinding when they’d left the hospital and he wondered if the world even really cared about what they had gone through, or if it was just about making a story out of it. He didn’t want to see a sensationalized version of what had happen, his mind has distorted his recollection of it more than enough.

He lost a piece of himself that night, and so had Betty, and it seemed like no one really cared about that. 

No one except them at least. 

They lay together on Betty’s bed. The sheets had been cleaned recently and they smell fresh, courtesy of Cheryl Blossom. Cheryl had called in professional cleaners to leave the apartment as though no one ever even lived there. But someone had, and something happened to them. Try as he might, but no one can wash away memories. He presses his face into the sheets and inhales the smell, something miniscule that brings him the softest touch of comfort. It muffles the voices that are constantly screaming in his head for a moment, and it’s there for a second before it’s gone. 

“You should have gone home with your mom,” he lifts his head out of the pillow and whispers to Betty as he touches her cheek softly. They’re rosy and pink and she looks alive. She looks so positively alive that his heart twinges with a sick jealousy. He doesn’t look alive, and he doesn’t feel it either. 

They’ve been out of the hospital for a few days now, but he never stops telling her this. She shouldn’t be here anymore. There was nothing left for her here; just bad memories and heartbreak. 

“You’re here,” she says and he wonders if he said that last part aloud or if she just knows what he’s thinking. “I won’t leave without you. We start over together, remember?” She wiggles herself closer to him, something that used to be so simple is now a struggle due to her cast, and places her lips to his softly. The kiss is gentle, like most things with Betty are, and it reminds him of why he’d fallen in love with her and everything he loves about her. He wasn’t even sure if men like him deserved people like Betty Cooper, but after everything, she was still here, she was laying down with him and their lips were pressed together and well, that had to count for something. 

“I love you,” he whispers against her lips quietly. “Just… just don’t forget that.” 

He’s not sure why he says that last part and it bounces around in his brain for a few seconds before Betty smiles at him and then he forgets about everything else. 

“I love you,” she says with a smile. 

And well, that has to count for something too.

.

.

.

_A scream echoes around him, the sound of metal hitting flesh. The screaming gets louder and louder. Whose screaming is it? He doesn’t have a clue. He doesn’t care._

_His chest feels like it’s on fire. Is he the one screaming? He thinks he’s screaming. He doesn’t know. His face hurts. Why does it hurt? He can’t remember… he can’t._

_I love you._

_‘Game over, Betty.’_

_I love you._

_The sound of a pistol hitting someone in the face rings out throughout the room. Gunfire._

_Game over. Game over. Game over._

Jughead Jones lets out a loud gasp as he wakes up, sitting up straight and nearly throwing himself off the edge of the bed as he does. His limbs feel heavy and sluggish, he can’t defend himself in this state. He reaches for the gun in the bedside table drawer and takes it off safety as he holds it in front of himself, hands shaking, aiming at nothing; aiming at _anything_. The streetlamp just outside the window shines on a dark patch of the wall where they’d once intended to hang a painting. An empty space.

Another reminder that tonight, just like every other night, there is _nothing_ there.

He’s breathing so hard that he can’t even think. His finger is on the trigger and he’s not sure why anymore, but his hands feel frozen to the gun. He can’t move. That is until a light snore fills the room and he jumps up, turns to the side and his eyes lock on blonde hair fanned out on the pillow next to him. 

_Betty._

He drops the gun almost immediately, fumbling around to put it back on safety. Betty’s next to him. She’s alive. She’s okay. 

Or as okay as she can be. 

Her leg is in a heavy white cast, propped on top of a pillow as she sleeps. Her ribs are still bandaged up and bruises are scattered across her body in various spaces. There’s a cut next to her right eye where Marisol hit her with the gun, but the black bruise that had been there is fading into something lighter. She looks peaceful as she sleeps and he wonders how that’s even possible. How can she look so peaceful while he sits here in a panic? She sleeps like everything is okay, like _they’re_ okay. 

They definitely aren’t. 

These days she can’t sleep until the late hours, when the rest of the world is already out cold, but it gets to her eventually. On his hand, all he does is feign sleep until it takes him too, and he’s left woken up again with the same horrible nightmare. Last night he got an hour of sleep; tonight he knows that he’s not that lucky. His nightmares keep him awake; no matter how hard he tries to push them away. 

But it wasn’t a nightmare. It was real. It _happened_. That multiplied the pain tenfold. These weren’t horrific images conjured up by his subconscious, these were things he had to see with his own two eyes. Even now, if he closes his eyes, he can still see it all happening. He’s never been a big believer in God, but he’s prayed a few nights every now and then; begging God to take away all of his fear and his pain. He closes his eyes and tries to pray, but all he sees is Betty, bruised and bloody, tears streaming down her face with her mouth open wide as she screams silently. It’s always silent in his head while he lays awake; he wonders if maybe that’s God trying to ease the pain. If it is, God has a sick sense of humor. 

He feels bad for Betty, but somehow he feels even worse for himself. He remembers feeling like they had won after Chris and Marisol had been killed, but he knows now that he was an idiot. They didn’t win anything. They’re alive, but at the cost of himself, his peace of mind, his sanity. He’s never felt so empty; so soulless. He can’t even sleep without that night haunting him. The sound of Betty’s screaming, the taunts thrown at them like knives, the bullet going through him. He can remember it all and he just wishes he didn’t. 

_Sometimes he wishes he hadn’t-._

He shakes his head as he tries to make those thoughts go away. They never really do, but he can at least try to wish them away. After all, he’s here. Betty’s here. That has to be okay, it has to be enough for him. Why isn’t it enough? 

He places the gun back into the drawer and looks at the clock. It’s three in the morning, the same time it is every time he wakes up in the middle of the night. He’s been asleep for approximately thirty five minutes. The bed is soaked with his sweat and he grimaces as he gets up and walks over to the bathroom. He’s quiet so that he doesn’t wake up Betty and he only turns on the bathroom light after he closes the door behind him.

He yanks off his shirt and sweatpants, staring at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t recognize the man staring back at him. It’s only been a few weeks since he was released from the hospital but he somehow looks like he’s aged ten years. The dark circles under his eyes have never been so prominent and the bandage on his chest is a cold reminder of what he almost lost. 

Yet as he stands here looking at himself, he doesn’t feel anything. He used to feel scared, he used to feel angry, he used to feel pain. But he doesn’t anymore. He used to feel love, but he doesn’t even feel that anymore. He can’t feel anything. 

He looks at Betty and he feels nothing. He sees a girl that he almost killed. It doesn’t matter how many times she says it’s not his fault, he can’t stop blaming himself. He was supposed to protect her and he couldn’t even do that. Betty could have died that night and it would have been his fault.

He wants to feel love. More importantly, he wants to move on with his life. 

He wants to feel something, _anything_. 

It’s almost automatic, the way his hand slowly raises up as he brings it towards his chest. His face remains blank as he presses his fingers gently to where he knows the bullet wound is. He feels nothing. And then he pushes down harder and harder until he has to bite his lip to stop from screaming out. The pain is excruciating, his whole chest feels like it’s on fire, and when he finally releases his hold on his lip, the taste of copper trickles down his throat. There are tears in his eyes, but still. He feels absolutely nothing and yet it’s the most he’s felt in weeks. 

He opens up the medicine cabinet and grabs the pills that are labeled for him, the painkillers that the hospital had provided for him, and he takes three of them, swallowing them dry. 

He was lucky, that’s what the doctors told him. The bullet didn’t hit any major organs or blood vessels, there’s less damage and he’s _so lucky_. 

For someone who has survived what he’s survived, it makes sense for people to call him lucky. But he can’t bring himself to feel any sort of gratefulness. All he feels absolute, crushing misery.

He turns the shower onto the highest setting and doesn’t even think as he steps into the small area. He’s still in his underwear and he doesn’t even take off his bandage like he’s supposed to, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t get under the water. He just sits at the edge of the shower and lets the steam surround him. It’s so hot that he starts to feel a little faint and he doesn’t know how long he sits there, not like it makes a difference though. The heat doesn’t matter. 

He can’t feel a damn thing.

.

.

.

He stares at the soup in front of him. Betty’s been trying to cook lately; she says it takes her mind off of things. She bakes until one in the morning and then wakes up at seven to cook different meals for them. As much as he loves to see her make efforts to move on, he feels almost a pang of jealousy. At least she has the energy to try. Jughead doesn’t even have the will to tell her he isn’t hungry; that the last thing he wants is to be her taste tester. Because Betty doesn’t deserve that. She’s trying so hard to make things go back to the way they used to be, and he’s trying his hardest to play along, but it’s getting harder and harder to smile at her. He must be the biggest asshole alive, he thinks, but still, he can’t bring himself to care; to try and stop. 

He tries to remember how happy he’d been whenever he’d seen her at the hospital, she was alive and smiling at him and telling him she loved him and he’d been so happy. He tries to find that happiness again, but he can’t. No matter how hard he tries, he just can’t find it. He doesn’t even know when it disappeared, but it did and he isn’t sure how to find it again. He’s not sure if he ever will and the thought doesn’t scare him like it once used to. He accepts it. This has to be his punishment for not being able to save her from all of this. He wasn’t able to save her from Chris in the end. In the end, in their own way, Chris and Marisol had won; they would forever be a corner in the darkest part of Betty and Jughead’s minds. They would forever haunt them and that was something Jughead could never change; something he’d never be able to fix.

And then there was Veronica Lodge. He can’t sit here and act like he knew her. He can’t recall an entire conversation between the two of them. She’d simply been someone that he’d never really acquainted himself with because he didn’t think she mattered beyond her connection to Betty. And now she was dead. She was dead because Jughead couldn’t find this guy; he couldn’t stop him like he was supposed to. He had promised Betty countless times that he would find her stalker and that he wouldn’t hurt her anymore and in the end that hadn’t meant a damn thing. In the end it wasn’t even Betty who had been a true target; it was Veronica Lodge, an innocent young woman bursting at the seams with talents and dreams, with a heart full of love. It killed him to picture it, that heart sitting six feet under. And despite the fact that no one really blamed him, Jughead felt like he had that blood on his hands too. He wished someone would hold him accountable.

Mindlessly, he rubs his hands on his jeans, trying to rid them of the blood that he knows _isn’t_ there. He rubs and he rubs and he rubs until they feel a little raw. 

“Cheryl mentioned stopping by,” Betty says as she blows on her own soup. Jughead doesn’t acknowledge her. If she notices, if it bothers her at all, she doesn’t show it. “Maybe we could all go out? You know, go to a dinner or something. It would be nice to get some fresh air. This place is kind of suffocating me.” 

Suffocating. He remembers trying to breathe after he’d been shot. Even now, he can feel his chest start to constrict and has to close his eyes and count to ten. He has to remind himself that he isn’t dying, that he is okay. He is going to live. He rubs his hands against his jeans even harder. 

Betty’s words come back to him and he wants to tell her just how much he fucking _hates_ this place. They’re still living at the old place because it’s not practical for them to move with Jughead as banged up as his is. She’s hardly in the condition to lift things herself either. They don’t have the time or the physical health to pack this whole place up and start again somewhere new. So for now, they just have to wait.

Waiting is getting to be his least favourite thing in the whole fucking world.

Seems like there’s a lot of waiting lately. He’s waiting for the bullet wound to heal and he’s waiting for the pain medication to run out; something that’s happening a little quicker than it should be. He knows the doctor only recommended taking one or two pills for the pain; but these days he takes three. It helps. It _does_. He’s waiting for his brain to stop compartmentalizing his emotions so he can cycle through them and keep living his life the way he wants to. He’s waiting for Betty to realize they need to get the fuck out of Los Angeles _right now_. 

In that moment, Jughead decides he’s officially had it with waiting.

“No,” he whispers as he stares ahead blankly. 

“What?” Betty ask, turning to look at him. He doesn’t look back at her, but he can see her green eyes in his head perfectly, wide and confused. 

“No,” he repeats a bit louder. “No. I don’t want to see Cheryl.” 

“Oh,” she sounds taken aback, hurt almost, but then she smiles. She smiles so much these days. It used to be his favorite look on her, but he hates it now, because like everything else in their lives it isn’t the same and it never will be again. He hates it because he knows how forced and fake it is. She smiles too much and Jughead wonders how she has the energy to pretend. He just wants her to stop faking it. 

“That’s fine, Jug. But maybe you and I can go do something? Or maybe we can rent a movie and watch it together? Just… spend some time together. Does that sound okay?” He doesn’t say anything, but his grip on the spoon in his hand tightens. “Maybe we could even go grocery shopping together.” Why is she suggesting that? She’s barely capable of walking around their apartment. “I just really think we should get some fresh air, get out of home for a while.” 

Home. The word triggers a boiling anger in him like nothing else ever has and before he even knows what he’s doing, he’s standing up and staring down at her in frustration. He’s panting from holding his breath.

“This isn’t home!” He yells out, but his voice breaks as if he’s about to laugh. He feels hysterical. All of the pent up anger and frustration he’d felt over the past few weeks hits him like a ton of bricks. “It’s not home!” 

“Jughead,” Betty says gently as she reaches out for him. He can see the way she flinches at his tone and the hint of fear in her eyes. He knows it’s fear, he recognizes it from his own reflection late at night.

He wants to say sorry, he wants to reach and hold her. Deep down, somewhere inside of him beneath heaping heavy piles of nothingness, he feels like shit for doing this to her. He feels like a child, acting like he’s the only one who’s hurting, but he can’t stop. The words are flowing from his mouth and no matter how badly he wishes he could stop, he can’t.

So she can’t _“Jughead”_ him out of this one. He reels away from her. He’s going to say what he wants to say.

“This is the place I was forced to live! This isn’t my home. It’s a fucking prison!” This time, the hurt in her face is obvious. “You said we could leave! You told me in the hospital that we could leave, that we could start over!” She becomes blurry as he feels something wet land on his cheek. “You told me- you said- you said, you _promised_ -” he chants the words over and over again, his voice slowly losing its volume, his whole body losing its strength. 

He sinks back into the chair, shame curling it’s way into his stomach. He feels that shame double as she limps over to him, the bulky cast on her leg restraining her movements.

_That’s my fault too._

The guilt of that night never seems to stop eating at him, even though there’s barely a thing left. He wonders if he’ll ever stop feeling like this and then that voice in his head reminds him that he doesn’t _deserve_ to stop feeling like this. He deserves to feel this way. His foolishness nearly killed the love of his life, he’s to blame for that for the rest of his life.

Soft arms wrap around him and he’s torn between ripping himself out of them and sinking into them forever. He wants to scream. He wants to cry. But he can’t actually do anything. For an eternity, Betty keeps her arms around him, his face pressed into her stomach as he wills himself to cry.

There’s nothing left to cry about anymore. 

He brings his face back up and his eyes widen as he takes in her tear stained cheeks. Slowly, as if he’s scared, he reaches up and touches them, wiping them away gently. 

“I want to leave too,” she whispers to him, lip wobbling. “I keep trying to pretend and play house and think about everything except that night. But I want to talk about it instead of acting like it’s okay when...”

“When it’s not,” he says weakly. “We can talk about it, Betty. We _have_ to talk about it. Look at us, we’re bottling it up and it’s destroying us. I can’t do that anymore, I can’t sit here and pretend.”

“Are we ever going to be okay again?” She asks, a tear slipping down her face despite her best efforts. It’s the first _real_ thing she’s said to him since they’ve left the hospital. 

He opens his mouth to answer but no words follow. He doesn’t know.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is now @herondalelesbian if you want to yell at me. 
> 
> love you if you read this. <3 leave a comment, because i'm so fucking nervous.


End file.
